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Straitjacket drug halts herpes virus’s escape stunt

AS ANYONE with recurrent cold sores knows, herpes is a master escape artist. But now a treatment that cuts off the virus’s means of escape could thwart its disappearing and reappearing act.

When the virus infects cells, the body defends itself by wrapping up the viral genome to prevent the viral genes from being expressed. The virus hijacks the cell’s own enzymes to free itself. After the infection, the virus hides elsewhere in the body.

Thomas Kristie at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland, and colleagues developed a drug that halts the virus’s escape by inhibiting the enzymes it uses to free itself (Science Translational Medicine, doi.org/j64).

The team tested the drug on mice infected with the herpes that causes cold sores. A month later, once the virus was dormant, neurons were cultured from the brain’s trigeminal ganglia, which harbours that type of herpes. The virus did not reactivate.

The approach could “open up a new arena of antiviral drugs” that shut down herpes viruses at an early stage of infection, says Kristie. But the drug is a bit of “a sledgehammer”, says Robert White at Imperial College London, so side effects must be investigated.